


the mountain should crumble to the sea

by ShyAudacity



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Billy Hargrove Isn't The Worst, Billy is not having a good time. that's mostly it, Crying, Dissociation, Established Relationship, Fix-It, Hurt Billy Hargrove, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Mileven, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, My First Work in This Fandom, Paranoia, Post-Season/Series 03, Protective Jim "Chief" Hopper, Protective Steve Harrington, Suicidal Thoughts, i dont know? maybe?, just a little, maybe ooc idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 20:25:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19708771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShyAudacity/pseuds/ShyAudacity
Summary: One second he’s staring down a black abyss, begging and screaming to be let out, and the next thing he knows, Billy is in Steve Harrington’s bedroom, shirtless and laying on top of the covers.What in all fuck is going on?ORThe one where no one really dies.





	the mountain should crumble to the sea

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first time I've written something other than riverdale in two years so uhhhhh go easy on me. 
> 
> Unbeta'd and title from Stand By Me.

One second he’s staring down a black abyss, begging and screaming to be _let out_ , and the next thing he knows, Billy is in Steve Harrington’s bedroom, shirtless and laying on top of the covers.

_What in all fuck is going on?_

Steve is standing at the end of the bed, also shirtless and looking at Billy like he’s waiting for a response.

“What?” he rasps, amazed that he’s still even able to speak.

“I _said,_ where are you?”

Billy gapes at Steve, unsure of himself. The last few hours- days?- are such a blur that he’s not even sure of what’s happening right now.

“I-I’m,” he stutters, “I’m right here.”

Steve clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, shaking his head; he uses his knees to pull himself up onto the bed. Steve straddles his waist, then braces his left hand near Billy’s shoulder, looming over him. “No,” he says, using his free hand to tap on Billy’s forehead, “No, I think you’re stuck up here. What’s got you so sidetracked, Hargrove?”

“N-Nothing.”

Steve _hmms_ , says, “See, I hear what you’re saying, but I still don’t believe you.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

He leans in closer, leaving quick, closed-mouthed kisses against Billy’s skin; Billy feels like he couldn’t move even if he wanted to. Like there are invisible handcuffs holding him down, keeping him rooted in this very spot.

Steve reaches the edge of Billy’s collarbone, nipping at his skin and making Billy’s heart leap inside of his chest. 

“What- what are you doing?”

Steve doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he sucks at the sensitive skin right under Billy’s Adam’s apple. “I’m trying to get you out of your head. And wake you up.”

“But I’m- I’m not asleep.”

“You need to wake up, Billy.” 

Billy looks up at him when his tone turns from borderline joking to stone cold; it’s now that he realizes that Steve has stopped kissing him. He finds Steve’s face blank and devoid of emotion. His eyes are glossy and burning a hole into his forehead, searching for his soul, seemingly. A sour pit builds in Billy’s stomach; he suddenly feels like he’s being pulled away by some outside force. The colors are starting to change all around him, melting away into nothing.

“Wake up.” 

“Harrington, what are you-?”

_“WAKE UP!”_

Billy gasps back to life on the floor of the Starcourt mall. Each breath stutters over the next one as they come. The once glass ceiling is now just a pattern of stars; it’s the first thing that he notices aside from the rushing of noise in his ears. He can hear the shrill sound of squad cars and ambulance coming from outside. Slivers of glass press into his skin as he sits up, still in utter disbelief.

_Oh God. Not again._

Billy gets up on tottery legs, struggling to find solid ground. The air is humid around him and there’s a faint feeling of a breeze blowing on his skin. His hands rake through his hair, tugging on the strands; he pats mindlessly at his chest, amazed that there isn’t a drop of blood on him anywhere. The overwhelming feeling of panic in his chest is doubling by the second; he struggles to come up with anything coherent.

There’s a faint, fading memory playing in the back of his brain- one of Max standing over him, begging him to get up.

_Max. I have to find Max._

By some shred of luck, Billy makes it outside without falling on his face. A couple of cops look at him funny and one paramedic has the audacity to try and _touch him_ , but Billy dodges all of them. He finds himself in the middle of the parking lot, still breathing heavy as his eyes search the swarm of people moving around him.

_Goddammit, where the fuck is Max and- Steve. Shit, Steve was here too. Where the hell could they be?_

There is so much happening all at once that he can’t even tell what’s what. The fear in him feels like it’s about to bubble over and start spilling out of his ears. From behind him, Billy hears a stunned voice yell from across the lot, “Holy _shit_.” 

He looks over his shoulder and it’s that Wheeler kid, looking at him like he can’t believe his eyes; Billy’s eyes shift to the left of kid Wheeler and- there’s _Steve_. His Steve. All dressed up in his ridiculous Scoops uniform and an ugly shiner surrounding his eye; just the sight of him makes Billy feel like he’s going to cry. A knot forms in his throat, demanding to be noticed.

He must have heard what Wheeler said because Steve looks over at him finally and Billy feels his resolve start to break. Steve’s eyes go wide, moving towards him without even having to be asked which is good because Billy feels like he can’t even speak. His throat is still raw from- whatever that other place was that he was in before.

Steve rushes to Billy, throwing his arms around his waist; Billy stumbles from the contact, his arms feel like limp noodles as he pulls them around Steve’s shoulders.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” Steve says in a rush and right in his ear. “Jesus, you scared the _fuck_ out of me, Hargrove.”

This is what breaks him, surprisingly enough. Billy leans into Steve for once, shaking and _crying_ against his jaw. He couldn’t stop it even if he tried to, his nerves are fried and getting the better of him. If his father ever saw him doing this then he’d be a dead man-

Dead man. Shit. _Shit_.

His arms are still around Steve’s neck- arguably the only thing keeping him upright- when Billy realizes that Steve has been talking to him this whole time and his tone is growing panicked.

“Billy?” Steve asks softly, hand cradling the back of his head. “Billy. Baby, I need you to answer me. Are you okay?”

A part of him wants to say _I’m here_ , but at this point he’s not even sure if that’s true. He pulls his heavy head away from the groove of Steve’s neck, tears streaming out of his eyes still. Instead of answering the original question, he looks around blearily and asks, “M-Max, where’s Max?”

“Shit, I don’t know,” Steve says, also looking around. “I thought I saw her with-.”

Neither one of them needs to wonder much longer when a young girls voice cuts Steve off, exclaiming, “Billy? … _Billy!”_

He looks over his left shoulder and sees Max ducking through the crowd, running right for him. Billy takes a step back from Steve and immediately regrets it when his knees start to buckle. Max all but flies into his chest and it knocks him on his ass, taking both of them down; she lands mostly on his chest when they hit the blacktop and Billy doesn’t know what to do other than hold her closer.

He sits up after a minute, still keeping a tight hold on her; he’s well aware that both of them are sobbing louder than everyone else around them, but Billy still can't stop it from coming out of him. Billy keeps saying _I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry_ over and over again like it’s the only thing that he knows.

Max pulls her face away from his chest at some point, firmly shaking her head at him. “It wasn’t you,” she says shakily, “It wasn’t you- you didn’t do all those bad things, Billy.”

Her hands are hovering on either side of his face, and this reminds him of something else; the echo of _she was pretty_ starts going through his head before he can stop it.

_That girl. That weird girl was here, too._

He looks up and spots her brightly patterned shirt about fifteen feet away, wrapped up in Chief Hopper’s protective hold; Hopper looks about as freaked out as Billy feels right now. He wonders, for a minute, if what happened to him also happened to the Chief. Maybe Hopper also woke up and was confused by his state of being alive.

The girl- Ellie, or something like that- sees Billy looking at her and her eyes go wide; like she’s surprised by the sight of him.

If he thought he could manage it, he’d walk right over to her and ask _how the hell did you do that_ , but he _can’t_. So he doesn’t bother to try. Instead, he mouths a thank you in her direction, and she nods back at him before turning into Hopper’s grip even more.

Billy tries to hide his flinch when Steve’s hand finds his shoulder, but it hardly works.

“C’mon,” Steve says, “We’ve gotta get you out of here- before someone sees you.”

_Right, because of that thing- because of what we did._

Billy shakes the thought out of his head. He grips Steve’s arms as he stands up, still wobbly as he goes. Steve takes his hand, not even caring that there’s a crowd around, and leads him off in the direction of the first working car he can find.

Steve doesn’t let go of Billy even once, and _goddamn_ , is he grateful.

They end up following the chief back to his cabin in something unfortunately called the “Todd father” since Billy’s car is out of commission and Steve doesn't have a clue where his keys are. Just as well, it seems that the cabin is the only real safe place in all of Hawkins at this point. He loses his footing more than once while trying to walk in the dark through the woods and he would have face planted had Steve not still been holding onto him.

Hopper, thank god, doesn’t say anything about their conjoined hands. He looks around the small cabin when they get there and sighs at the state of it, then looks back to Steve and Billy.

“We’ll clean up out here, get the couch set up,” he says, “Why don’t you guys go clean up in the bathroom, yeah?”

The girl from before- _El_ \- won’t step out from behind Hopper, like she’s still afraid of Billy in a way, and he can’t blame her. He’s afraid of himself most of the time, too.

He must have agreed because the next thing Billy knows he’s in the bathtub, halfway naked and an inch of room temperature water surrounding him. Time keeps cutting out on him; every time he closes his eyes it’s like another ten minutes have passed- it makes him feel like he’s back in that place again, like he’s never going to be able to leave-

“Sorry, about getting your clothes wet,” Steve says, scooping water into his hands and using it to wipe the black smudge off of Billy’s arms. “I figured Hopper could loan you something if you need it.” 

Billy just nods, wanting to be out of the water already. His skin is starting to crawl just thinking all of the shit that _thing_ made him do-

A part of him thinks that all of this is just some big, bad dream.

The living room looks better when they finally come out of the bathroom. The couch isn’t upended anymore and a path has been cleared on the floor so no one will trip. His body feels heavy as he plops down onto the couch, Steve still standing in front of him.

“I’m gonna go through the fridge, see if there’s anything you can eat- are you gonna be okay alone for a minute?”

Billy nods numbly though he’s not even sure of that statement and Steve kisses his forehead once before walking away. He hasn’t been gone for more than two seconds before El creeps into his line of sight, holding herself very carefully.

“Cold?”

His voice fails him as he asks, “What?”

“Are you cold?”

He realizes then that he’s still shaking a ridiculous amount- no wonder she looks so freaked out. Before Billy can answer her, she’s disappearing behind a door and coming back a second later with a blanket in her hands. She lays it across his lap, covering him up to his elbows and he squeaks out a thank you.

He’s still trying to convince himself that all of this is real when Max and kid Wheeler burst in through the door- shit, Billy didn’t even realize that she hadn’t been with them this whole time.

Wheeler heads straight for El whereas Max sits down next to him, barely leaving an inch of space. “Where’s Steve?”

It can’t have been more than five minutes since that conversation but he can’t remember it for the life of him. Even with all of the chaos going on around him he’s so tired and his eyelids are growing heavy- he thinks his brain might actually be turning to mush.

“Around, somewhere,” he manages, his head lolling onto his shoulder in Max’s direction. He can feel himself settling into the couch more and more as the seconds go on; Max adjusts his head so it’s not sitting at such a weird angle and rests it on her own shoulder.

“Get some sleep, Billy,” she says quietly, “We can figure this all out when you wake up.”

Out of nowhere, Billy has a sudden, flashing memory of right before he came back- one of Steve screaming at him to wake up and it sends a shiver down his spine. He shoves the thought away- he can let that moment feed his nightmares some other time. Though, as he drifts off, head snug against Max’s shoulder, he finds himself still thinking:

_I should’ve stayed dead._

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah idk either, it just came out of me. 
> 
> Thanks for reading my fic. Comments/Kudos are appreciated and encouraged. Have a great day!


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